An attempt to help explain the mysteries and magic that are part and parcel of 'probation'.

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Turning Up the Heat On the MoJ

As the fallout from the collapse of Carillion gathers pace, attention is at last turning to the MoJ and their infamous contracting skills. This on the Huffington Post website:-

Carillion Collapse: Justice Ministers Under Fire For Failing To Wrest Control Of Prison Maintenance From Firm

Public cash was thrown at Carillion to maintain British prisons despite ministers twice admitting the soon-to-go-bust firm was failing to deliver. Cells were left with smashed windows while inmates lived in squalor and, in some cases, were unable to access a towel and soap. But the Government still handed Carillion almost £100m from the public purse over the course of two years despite warnings.

Outsourcing and construction giant Carillion - which employs 20,000 British people - went into liquidation on Monday after issuing a major profits warning last year. It has public sector or public/private partnership contracts worth a staggering £1.7bn, including providing school dinners, cleaning and catering at NHS hospitals, building HS2 and maintaining 50,000 army base homes for the Ministry of Defence. It had issued three profits warnings before collapsing and had been struggling under £900m of debt and a £587m pension deficit.

Now justice ministers face a barrage of questions over why Carillion’s prison maintenance contracts weren’t wrested from the firm when serious evidence of failure started to emerge. They twice revealed in Parliament they were unhappy with the group’s performance. In September 2016, the then Prisons Minister Sam Gyimah told MPs:

“I am particularly concerned about the rate of repairs in our prisons. Carillion is one company that has a contract and receives public funds to perform such work, and I have not been impressed by what I have heard about its response speed. I will meet its management to ensure that it delivers what we expect.”

“This is not just about the shortcomings of Carillion but represents the Government’s damaging obsession with privatisation and outsourcing across our justice sector and beyond. Carillion continued to pocket tens of millions of pounds per year from the taxpayer for running prison contracts even when it was clear to ministers themselves that it was failing to properly deliver basic maintenance services. When these essential repair services were outsourced, they didn’t just fail to deliver the promised savings but made it more difficult for prison governors to manage prisoners and to help turn their lives around.

Cells were left unusable and prisoners unable at times to even get access to towels and soap. Labour has not only ruled out building any more private prisons but had already promised that in office it would look at returning prison service repairs contracts to the public sector. The Government must now bring those Carillion prison contracts back in house.”

Steve Gillan General Secretary of the Prison Officers Association called the conditions in jails “inhumane” and said urgent action was needed to carry out repairs that Carillion had not done. He said:

“We need to know the contingency plans to keep our prisons operational. During the time Carillion had this contract the level of essential maintenance and work that is outstanding has spiraled out of control. This has resulted in loss of prison accommodation and inhumane conditions in our prisons”.

Ministers from across government met for an emergency COBRA meeting to discuss the fallout from the Carillion crisis. The Government also faces questions over why it continued to hand Carillion public sector contracts despite the profits warning. Ministers said the company refused a last-ditch £20m bailout, saying the firm and not taxpayers should foot the bill for Carillion’s failure.

Anger also erupted in Parliament over the bonuses handed to top Carillion bosses. The firm’s former chief executive Richard Howson pocketed £1.5m in salary, bonuses and pension payments during 2016 and, as part of his departure deal,Carillion agreed to keep paying him a £660,000 salary and £28,000 in benefits until October. Former finance chief Zafar Khan, who left Carillion in September, will receive £425,000 in base salary for 12 months. Interim chief executive Keith Cochrane will be paid his £750,000 salary until July, despite leaving the company in February.

The chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Labour MP Rachel Reeves, said the huge salary payments should stop immediately. She said that despite Carillion’s towering debts “year after year after year, they paid dividends out to their shareholders.” Reeves hit out at Howson’s continued salary payments and called for them to be stopped “as of today” before demanding a shake-up in the UK’s corporate governance laws “so that companies can’t siphon off money to the detriment of suppliers, workers and ultimately the British taxpayer.”

Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told MPs that the role of the company’s former and current directors in Carillion’s collapse will be investigated by the Official Receiver, and they could face “severe penalties”. He said that while it would be wrong to pre-empt any inquiry, “I can certainly well understand and appreciate that sense of unfairness”.

Referring to claims that the past and present board of directors could still benefit from planned payouts, Lidington said: “The Official Receiver does not only have power to investigate but the power to impose severe penalties if he thinks misconduct has taken place.”

In July 2014, the Ministry of Justice created 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to manage low and medium risk offenders on probation in England and Wales. Eight months later, the managing of CRCs was contracted out to eight companies.

By contracting out the Companies, the Government intended to incentivise innovation and open the market. However, in 2017 the Ministry made amendments to the contracts to run CRCs. This was owing to "unforeseen challenges".

The National Audit Office investigated the changes to the contracts. It found that the volume of CRCs’ work was below the expected level, meaning the contracts until 2022 were worth £2.1 billion to the contractors rather than £3.7 billion. With less income, the contractors were less able to deliver the required services and so the Ministry of Justice paid additional sums sustained good service.

The Ministry of Justice now expects to spend approximately £2.5 billion on the contracts. Although well below the 2016 projection of £3.7 billion, it covers a lower volume of work.

The Public Accounts Committee will ask officials from the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probations Service about the management of CRC contracts, why they made the changes they did, and how they can ensure value-for-money in the future.--oo00oo--Thanks to the reader for this:-In advance of tomorrow's PAC hearing, some words from the March 2014 PAC hearing (& a link to the full transcript):

Antonia Romeo: I was going to say that one other lesson to be learned about contract management, of course, is that those who were involved in designing the contracts also have skin in the game when it comes to managing those contracts. When the programme finishes, the person responsible, the programme director who has this commercial experience, will move over and become the director of contract management and rehabilitation services, working within NOMS, for Michael.

Michael Spurr: The first thing to say is that there will be and we have negotiated with trade unions and others a voluntary redundancy package for use where we have identified surplus staff and it would be available post-June when we have moved to the new arrangements of setting up the CRCs and the NPS, but I anticipate that that will be used primarily for corporate service and support staff; operational staff numbers, I think we will need largely to retain, because the aim is to expand the case load....

Q175 Chair: The Report also talks about an aggressive timetable, Dame Ursula. How long is the period for getting the contracts in, from invitation to tender? How long has that been?

Dame Ursula Brennan: From the point of launching the invitation to tender to the point when we expect—

Q176 Chair: To when you want to sign them off in October. How long is that?

Dame Ursula Brennan: Between now and—

Q177 Chair: How long is it? What have you given yourselves between invitation—

Antonia Romeo: The invitation to tender will close in June this year.

Chair: That process—

Antonia Romeo: We have said that we will sign the contracts by the end of the year.

Q178 Chair: By October?

Antonia Romeo: By the end of the year.

Q179 Chair: Has that slipped from October to the end of the year now?

Antonia Romeo: No, there hasn’t been any slippage. I’m really aware that this is a programme that’s in flight, so if possible, I would prefer to commit to the overall commitment we have given for the programme, which is to roll out PBR by 2015... We plan to sign the contracts before the end of the year.

And some of the PAC recommendations from 2015:

* The Ministry is recruiting and training staff who can manage contractors and contracting over the long term. The Ministry maintained that appropriate weight will be placed on assessing the quality of the bids received and the organisations putting them forward. Contracts will be designed to prevent Community Rehabilitation Companies changing ownership without prior discussion with the Ministry and contingency arrangements are being considered to ensure that continuity of service will be maintained during the procurement and after the sale of the Community Rehabilitation Companies. The Ministry also plans to apply the lessons from past PAC reports and ensure that contracts have appropriate penalty clauses up to and including termination for non-performance.

* The Ministry should set out how it intends to satisfy itself that the proposed payment mechanism is workable. As we recommended in our recent report on contracting out public services, the Ministry must include open book accounting arrangements and ensure that they are used effectively. We would also want the NAO to have full access to contractual information that is relevant to assuring Parliament that value for money is being served in these contracts.

Lets hope these issues are revisited tomorrow by Meg Hillier & co, including questions as to whatever happened to the many 'report backs' expected to be delivered to the PAC.

25 comments:

Carillion: Were ministers and officials ignorant, negligent or complicit?

A cabinet member said to me yesterday, in all seriousness, that it would have been "illegal" for the government and public-sector bodies to have rejected bids from Carillion for government contracts in the second half of last year, when it was very publicly warning that its profitability was far less than it had been expecting and almost the entire City of London knew it was in serious difficulties.

There are two interpretations to put on what the minister told me. Either it was rubbish, to cover up the mistakes of officials and ministers. Or there is something very seriously wrong with government procurement rules. I tend to the view he was spinning like a political whirling dervish to cover up incompetence or worse. Because it is inconceivable that officials are banned from factoring into their contract-awarding decisions the balance-sheet strength or weakness of the bidding companies - or whether the successful bidding company is going to be alive long enough to deliver on the contract.

In fact the minister slightly gave the game away when he said: "Think about it, if we refused to award the contracts on the basis of its profit-warnings, we would have been hastening Carillion’s demise."

Good grief, to quote the management guru, Charlie Brown. The minister was basically admitting that government and public-sector contracts were being awarded to prop up a business known to be teetering on the brink.

He implies that ministers and officials were aware that Carillion could only be kept going by taking on more and more contracts, such that the cash flow from new contracts would provide confidence that losses on older contracts could be absorbed. Till the music stopped, as it always does.

So there is the nub of what any official investigation into Carillion’s demise needs to determine about the role of government and Whitehall. Were ministers and officials willfully ignorant of Carillion’s perilous condition? Were they seriously negligent? Or with their eyes open were they using public procurement to delay Carillion’s day of reckoning?

Just met up with an old PO friend who told me about the farcical CRC operations in her area, so farcical we laughed dispairingly. Some more humour then from the military:

'CarillionAmey want to reassure all military personnel that there will be no impact on services to your housing following the collapse of parent company 'Carillion.''CarillionAmy will still be late for every task, providing a shoddy standard of work using substandard materials whilst charging the sort of rate that private defence contractors expect in Iraq and Afghanistan.'

The trouble is this humour reflects a truth. For example, the basic premise of an outsourced payroll company is focussed expertise that makes the correct payments, on time, to the right people. When it repeatedly does not happen they deserve at the very least some jokes at their expense. Problem is I still haven't found the humour in my depleted bank balance as yet.

No point in looking to an integrity based series of failures for Carillion. What this slippery path way Is lead us all too is not the cronyism or the nepotism its worse how much of these massive contracts monies have found their way back to Parliamentary entertainments gifts holidays and directorships advisories and other brown stuffed envelopes. It will all be in there and it will at least come out in parts.

My prediction - Spurr ain't going to show tomorrow. He'll bring a note (from his mum or The Archbishop or Jesus) & retire gracefully to a place of untouchable safety before the voluminous pile of shit he's been nurturing finally hits the fan which is about to be plugged in & switched to turbo-boost.Heaton, Permanent Sec & skilled senior serpent, will undoubtedly direct everyone to the door where they can find the empty desks of HMPPS operational staff & whichever Justice Minister signed off on it.

For example, Working Links fell into the same trap as Carillion by overstretching, becoming insolvent and were bought up by a German asset-stripping fund, Aurelius. When such a scenario was raised by PAC chair it was made explicit by Spurr, Romeo & Brennan that NO CRC could sell on a contract - or be sold - without permission of the SoS (golden shareholder) and the MoJ. Who approved the hush-hush sale to Aurelius? Where is the public money going? Dino & co have been thwarted in their attempts to follow the money, so perhaps PAC could enlighten us?

Q71 Ian Swales: Can I just get an answer to my other question, which is about the ownership of community rehabilitation companies? Given that you are setting them up as companies with shares and so on—therefore, tradeable and what-have-you—what constraints, if any, are you placing on the long-term ownership of those companies? The most extreme one would be that the ownership reverts to the public sector if the original bidder decides to walk away or is sacked. But what about the point I made, that it is quite possible that the original bidders may then seek to exit by cashing in and selling to—potentially, I guess—a couple of the companies that did not bid in the first place?

Antonia Romeo: They would not be able to change ownership without discussing it with the MOJ.

Ian Swales: Well, that’s different.

Q72 Mr Bacon: As long as they talk to you about it, then they can sell. That is not what you meant, is it? Or is it?

Antonia Romeo: I am deliberately trying not to find myself in a position where I reveal too much during the process of a live competition. We have quite clearly set out in the contracts the basis on which such changes would be made, but what is quite clear is that they would have to get permission from MOJ to do that.

And as for MTCNovov in London:

Michael Spurr: Again, you are right; we have to ensure that we are able to deliver the services, and better than we have been delivering them to date. One of the things that gives us confidence that that will happen is that we are not looking to change the current borough structure of how services are delivered in London. So we will retain from the NPS side the local delivery unit at borough level and the expectation is that the community rehabilitation company—it is a single community rehabilitation company for London—will operate at borough level in the same way. They must to be able to deliver the services that are required in London.

Q98 Meg Hillier: So it is worth us looking at it locally—that is partly my point. A4e is my local Work programme provider and is in a bit of a tatty old warehouse on a back road. It is not a great place to go. Ian Swales mentioned his constituents having to travel. In London it is probably less of an issue, because distances are shorter. Are you putting anything in the contract to ensure that there is that kind of minimum level of service? How easy it is to get there makes quite a difference for someone who is perhaps attending reluctantly. You can have it provided cheaper, but with a lot fewer actual premises.

Dame Ursula Brennan: It is perhaps worth pointing out that in a way you have made the point yourself: if it is difficult for people to go there, the likelihood of your securing their engagement with the programme and, therefore, your succeeding in reducing rehabilitation—

Q99 Meg Hillier: Dame Ursula, you are more of an optimist than I am. Most of these companies are still trying to cut the corners.

So does this mean Working Links have been illegally acquired by Aurelius? I have read Dino's Parliamentary submission recently which raises this issue in some depth. There has been no explanation or transparency from the MoJ how the asset strippers Aurelias came to own the Working Links company and MoJ contracts to deliver justice services. Has this been processed covertly? We are aware of the catalogue of scandalous, corrupt cabinet ministers being removed recently, so nothing would surprise me. Will uncovering the truth be down to the diligent and tenacious pursuit of it, by individuals such as the likes of Dino et all. How long will the MoJ remain silent while dirty dreads prevail. Aurelias and it's like will leave when the carcass is dry but no doubt they take staff the pensions to pay Directors bonuses

Come on folks, get those bunsen burners out & warm their backsides! They are paid shedloads of public money, they have gilt-edged guaranteed pension pots far in excess of our annual salaries - this is what they're paid for - to be answerable to the electorate when they have been caught misleading everyone, same as Blair & co were eventually caught out (& their day of judgement is yet to come).

Romeo stated explicitly about TR "the government’s policy is to roll it out by 2015"; this meant she had a deadline to meet imposed by her political master, Grayling, purely for party political gain, i.e. "they will all be flogged off before the election." (Austin Mitchell MP).

"Richard Heaton: The NAO covered most of the areas that I am concerned about. Michael Spurr reports to me and the things that I would hold him to account for would be the relationship between the National Probation Service and the CRCs; elimination of perverse incentives; computers and IT that work successfully for staff who use them; high-quality data; reduction in cost; and, the key one, the reoffending rate. Those are the basic things on which I would hold Michael to account."

Our ValuesA company can be financially successful and highly efficient, but it needs a heart, too. That’s where Values come in.

At Carillion, our Values are at the heart of everything we do. They drive our commitment to delivering safe, sustainable and effective solutions for our customers and creating positive legacies wherever we work.

We say that our people are “living our Values” – the four Carillion Values define the way we behave, both with each other and with our customers and partners, and how we think, helping to shape the culture, character and beliefs of our business.

Our Values mean that our work is always more than just a job.

We Care

We respect each other and we do things safely and sustainably. It’s good for our people, our business and our local communities.

We achieve together

We value the contribution of each individual and we work together to build strong, open and trusting partnerships.

We improve

We listen, learn and adapt our ideas and experience into better solutions and service for our customers.

We deliver

We set ourselves stretching goals, taking pride in doing a great job and helping our customers and partners to succeed.

At Interserve, we support people and organisations to manage change – helping to create improved and better environments in places where people live and work.

Our direction and behaviours are underpinned by a clear vision and a set of core values.

Our Vision and Values EVERYONE HAS A VOICE

Everyone has a voice, so we listen and encourage openness. We value all views and opinions, we welcome discussion and we treat people as we, ourselves, would want to be treated - with respect and patience.

TAKE PRIDE IN WHAT YOU DO

Whatever the task in hand, everybody can and should take pride in a job well done - a job undertaken with care and done to the best of our abilities.

BRING BETTER TO LIFE

We are all about believing we can do better. Asking questions, thinking differently, seeking solutions and creating ideas to support our customers and adding value.

DO THE RIGHT THING

Doing the right thing means not accepting 'that will do', and not walking by when you could make a positive difference. The right thing also means the safe thing and the sustainable thing.

They are practiced liars. It's the language of confidence tricksters who will say anything to get the money to feather their nests. Remember how the banks engaged in mis-selling payment protection - everything is a ruse.

It's okay though everybody, Interserve's shareholders are set to get 25% more profit on their shares now they've sacked (among others) a load of our CRC colleagues sorry I mean undertaken some 'tough cost cutting'. we can only hope that this prediction is as sound as the article's additional claim of 'light at the end of the tunnel' for Carillion. web common, it was written nearly a whole week ago ... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/10/market-report-turnaround-hopes-lift-troubled-outsourcers-interserve/

Light at the end of the tunnel for battered outsourcers Interserve and Carillion sent their shares soaring as the two profit warning-hit companies look to arrest their decline.

After shedding 72pc in a bruising 2017, Interserve finally delivered a pleasant surprise to shareholders, upgrading its 2018 earnings per share guidance by 25pc as it begins to reap the rewards of new chief executive Debbie White’s tough cost-cutting programme.

Peer Carillion, which crashed 93pc last year, continued its rollercoaster week of trading, climbing back up to Monday’s high as its rejigged management team met with lenders and shareholders to discuss a new business plan.

After a turbulent year of contracts woe and share price nosedives, the hopes of recovery finally put Interserve and Carillion’s shares on the front foot again, clawing back 19.5p to 119p and 1.8p to 22.6p, respectively.

Question is.....Carillion were allowed to bid for TR contracts, what would happen now if they'd have got one?What have the MoJ got planned if one of the privateers running probation services goes tits up? Or they just want to pull out?What's the plan,?

Umm and the following fits with the closure of the Harrow office how? The response of "senior management" when the difficulties of travel that will face our service users was along the lines of "breach them if they don't report ". As they say, you couldn't make this up.

And as for MTCNovov in London:

Michael Spurr: Again, you are right; we have to ensure that we are able to deliver the services, and better than we have been delivering them to date. One of the things that gives us confidence that that will happen is that we are not looking to change the current borough structure of how services are delivered in London. So we will retain from the NPS side the local delivery unit at borough level and the expectation is that the community rehabilitation company—it is a single community rehabilitation company for London—will operate at borough level in the same way. They must to be able to deliver the services that are required in London.

Q98 Meg Hillier: So it is worth us looking at it locally—that is partly my point. A4e is my local Work programme provider and is in a bit of a tatty old warehouse on a back road. It is not a great place to go. Ian Swales mentioned his constituents having to travel. In London it is probably less of an issue, because distances are shorter. Are you putting anything in the contract to ensure that there is that kind of minimum level of service? How easy it is to get there makes quite a difference for someone who is perhaps attending reluctantly. You can have it provided cheaper, but with a lot fewer actual premises.

Dame Ursula Brennan: It is perhaps worth pointing out that in a way you have made the point yourself: if it is difficult for people to go there, the likelihood of your securing their engagement with the programme and, therefore, your succeeding in reducing rehabilitation—

Q99 Meg Hillier: Dame Ursula, you are more of an optimist than I am. Most of these companies are still trying to cut corners"

Surely any decent journalist worth their salt can follow the snail trail from employment to justice and now transport and find a common denominator... yes it is Tory idology that is now unraveling but chief ideologue who has left fingerprints all over this lies with one man.. I understand that backbench Tories nickname him Macavity the mystery cat..... nowhere to be seen

Not sure if this is the same story at the FT one above which you can't access without a subscription but the Independent is reporting as part of the Carillion story that the government has put Interserve on financial health watch: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/carillion-collapse-labour-corbyn-tories-need-to-get-house-in-order-a8163841.html so Purple Futures might not last much longer if Interserve goes the same way as Carillion

It's My Blog

Welcome to the wonderful world of probation! These are the personal thoughts of an ordinary probation officer struggling to come to terms with constant change, whilst trying to do a useful job for society. Sadly, change is so often obviously not progress. I am fully aware that my views do not represent official policy of government, my Service or possibly anyone else - but hey - it's my blog!

ATV 1962 Windsor Davies

About Me

A grumpy, disillusioned, CQSW trained, generic, main grade probation officer based in a small English town. All my contemporaries have either left, retired or been promoted. Newer colleagues simply don't understand the journey I've been on from advise, assist and befriend. (If there is anyone of similar name in the NAPO handbook, it's not me).